Torts - Cases, Principles, and Institutions Fifth Edition, 2016a

Witt & Tani, TCPI 8. Duty Problem
providing emergency care in a vehicle and in transit to a health-care facility while a third person
drives the vehicle. Such a narrow interpretation of the law offers little protection. Nor does it
offer much encouragement to a layperson to help others in peril. . . .
To hold, as appellant urges, that transportation is not a protected activity and not eligible
for immunity under the provisions of the Good Samaritan law would have the perverse effect of
discouraging an entire class of responses to emergency circumstances. Absent a clear legislative
direction that transportation is not a covered activity under the immunity statute, we are not
willing to adopt appellant’s argument. We hold that transportation of an injured person by nonemergency
personnel is a protected activity under the immunity provisions of the Good Samaritan
law. . . .
[W]e affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment.
B. Landowners and Occupiers
The traditional common law rule held that the owners and occupiers of land owed no
obligation of reasonable care to trespassers upon that land, and further that they owed only a
limited duty toward social guests to warn such guests of known latent hazards.
United Zinc & Chemical Co. v. Britt, 258 U.S. 268 (1922)
HOLMES, J.
This is a suit brought by the respondents against the petitioner to recover for the death of
two children, sons of the respondents. The facts that for the purposes of decision we shall assume
to have been proved are these. The petitioner owned a tract of about twenty acres in the outskirts
of the town of Iola, Kansas. Formerly it had there a plant for the making of sulphuric acid and
zinc spelter. In 1910 it tore the buildings down but left a basement and cellar, in which in July,
1916, water was accumulated, clear in appearance but in fact dangerously poisoned by sulphuric
acid and zinc sulphate that had come in one way or another from the petitioner’s works, as the
petitioner knew. The respondents had been travelling and encamped at some distance from this
place. A travelled way passed within 120 or 100 feet of it. On July 27, 1916, the children, who
were eight and eleven years old, came upon the petitioner’s land, went into the water, were
poisoned and died. . . . At the trial the Judge instructed the jury that if the water looked clear but
in fact was poisonous and thus the children were allured to it the petitioner was liable. The
respondents got a verdict and judgment, which was affirmed by the Circuit Court of Appeals.
. . . If the children had been adults they would have had no case. They would have been
trespassers and the owner of the land would have owed no duty to remove even hidden danger; it
would have been entitled to assume that they would obey the law and not trespass. . . . On the
other hand the duty of one who invites another upon his land not to lead him into a trap is well
settled, and while it is very plain that temptation is not invitation, it may be held that knowingly to
establish and expose, unfenced, to children of an age when they follow a bait as mechanically as a
fish, something that is certain to attract them, has the legal effect of an invitation to them although
not to an adult. But the principle if accepted must be very cautiously applied.
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